1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to the field of telecommunications, and particularly to providing advertising opportunities in directory assistance systems.
2. Description of Related Art
Telephone Directory Assistance has been around as long as there have been telephone operators. Once the number of telephone subscribers reached two and three digits, telephone directories were published as service to the large numbers of telephone subscribers. These published telephone directories or books helped both the subscribers and telephone operators locate and contact other telephone subscribers.
There are two types of telephone directories. The White Page-styled directory lists basic telephone contact information for all telephone subscribers; basic listings are free to all subscribers and subscribers are listed by name. The Yellow Page-styled directory lists products and services by category, to be included in a Yellow Page directory an advertiser must pay a fee. The Yellow Page directory advertiser pays for both the size of the advertisement or listing and for its inclusion in one or more specific categories.
Traditional directory assistance service provides telephone number look up to the White Page style directory. Enhanced directory assistance service provides look up to a Yellow Page style directory. The difference between the two is based on how a caller finds a particular directory listing.
In a traditional directory assistance service, the caller contacts a directory assistance operator and gives the operator the name of a business or person and its associated locale. The directory assistance operator then searches a telephone directory database for a telephone listing that matches the sought-after criteria. Upon finding a match or a set of matches, the operator informs the caller and either gets further information to narrow the results or offers to connect the caller to a desired telephone number.
In an enhanced directory assistance system, a caller contacts a directory assistance operator and in addition to providing as some localization information to narrow where the caller wishes to find the product or services, the caller provides a category name or keyword associated with the desired product or service. In the present art, an enhanced directory assistance operator then takes the provided information and searches or queries a Yellow Page-styled directory. Upon finding a match, the operator informs the caller and either gets further information to narrow the results or offers to connect the caller to the desired telephone number.
In the present art, inclusion in these paid listings is offered to a business or organization through monthly or yearly subscription fees. Also in the present art, listing partners can pay a premium fee to be listed at the top of a category or keyword lookup result list. The premium or preferred listing is given priority treatment by the directory assistance operator and mentioned before any other paid listings are communicated.
Several problems are presented by the current art in respect to making telephone number look up a profitable business venture.
In systems that use keywords to classify products and services, the keywords are determined independently from the business owners themselves. For instance, many directory assistance systems derive their keywords and classification from the government supplied Standard Industrial Code (SIC) system or something similar. This type of classification system, while being widely adopted, is also slow to change and adapt. Also, due to this inertia, the system does not offer enough granularity, meaning that a wide variety of products that are very different may fall under a single classification. For instance electronic farm monitoring equipment might fall under same electronics category as portable music devices.
In the current art the order of the listings is determined by uncontrollable methods. For instance, if result listings are arranged alphabetically, the only way to insure that your listing is included at the top of a list—with the exception of the paying for premium higher cost listings—is to change the name of the product or service.